Rush Limbaugh

Conservative pundits are downright furious about the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to preserve net neutrality, ensuring that internet service providers treat all data equally. But their anger seems driven more by reflexive hostility to any proposal that President Obama supports rather than an understanding of the principle behind net neutrality.

A group of GOP politicians, including two likely presidential candidates, have decided to appear in a documentary with anti-gay radicals accusing the equality movement of trying to ban religion. Such politicians already kowtow to extreme voices like Rush Limbaugh and the anti-government ideologues at Fox News, so it makes sense that they are now joining together to make absurd claims about the supposed dangers of gay rights in America.

Supporters of marriage equality made tremendous progress this year in striking down discriminatory bans on same-sex marriages while, on the local level, more municipalities have enacted legal protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Radical Right, however, sees these changes as a reason to find new strategies to fight what it believes is a tyrannical government bent on persecuting conservatives and inviting divine punishment. Facing losses in court and at the ballot box, many conservatives hope that their brand of anti-gay politics may find more success overseas.

Just in case you thought that the debate over gay rights was “over,” we decided to look back on some of the anti-gay Right’s worst moments of 2014.

While conservatives rail against civil disobedience to protest police brutality, they are hopeful that the anti-gay movement will launch its own civil disobedience campaigns. In 2014, Sen. Ted Cruz urged gay rights opponents to “disregard unjust edicts from the government” and Fox News pundit Todd Starnes predicted that conservatives would take part in acts of civil disobedience and marches reminiscent of the Civil Rights Movement. Pat Buchanan, Linda Harvey and Jeff Allen also joined calls for mass civil disobedience to protest LGBT equality, while Peter LaBarbera proposed protests to stop same-sex weddings.

While the Duggar family usually campaigns for Republican candidates across the country come election time, in 2014 they worked in their home state of Arkansas to repeal an ordinance in the city of Fayetteville that added the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity to existing bans on discrimination in areas such as commerce, housing and employment.

But Josh Duggar, who claims that God sent him to Washington D.C. to work with Family Research Council in opposing LGBT rights, defended their work to strip LGBT people of their rights and legal protections because it is done out of love for the LGBT community.

5. Rick Perry Goes There

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign flamed out after a series of poor debate performances, he used gay-baiting TV ads in one last desperate attempt to win the GOP nomination. Now, as Perry prepares for the 2016 campaign, it seems that by wearing new eyeglasses he is all of a sudden the new wonky candidate. He showed off this new-found knowledge during an appearance in California where he reacted to the news that the Texas GOP had adopted a resolution endorsing “reparative therapy and treatment” to help people “escape from the homosexual lifestyle” by comparing gay people to alcoholics.

“Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that,” Perry told the Commonwealth Club of California to audible groans from the crowd. “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

After the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, marriage equality opponents looked to their allies in Washington D.C. to try to reverse the court’s decision. Sen. Ted Cruz was more than happy to help, and the Texas senator joined Mike Lee, Utah’s freshman senator, in introducing the State Marriage Defense Act. The bill’s stated purpose is to undercut federal recognition of married same-sex couples, and while it didn’t gain much traction in Congress, it did give Cruz an opportunity to grandstand about his dreams of curtailing gay rights. He told right-wing radio hosts that his “heart weeps” due to same-sex couples’ legal victories, calling rulings in favor of marriage equality “heartbreaking” and a sign “that our constitutional liberties are being eroded.”

After the Supreme Court recently refused to hear appeals in several cases involving same-sex marriage rights, Cruz decided to introduce a constitutional amendment to ensure that the 14th Amendment cannot be used in cases involving equal rights for gays and lesbians.

One American Family Association radio host blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the U.S. military’s “sissification,” and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council linked the lifting of the ban on gay service members to what he called the “absolute destruction of our military readiness and our military morale.” Gordon Klingenschmitt read a statement on his “Pray In Jesus Name” program from a press release alleging that gay service members will soon be “taking breaks on the combat field to change diapers all because their treacherous sin causes them to lose control of their bowels.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, captured the mood best when he alleged that the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will make the U.S. more “vulnerable to terrorism” because gay soldiers will take after the ancient Greeks in bringing their lovers to the frontlines so they can “give them massages before they go into battle.”

This year, Uganda’s president signed into law a new version of the country’s “Anti-Homosexuality Act” which imposed extreme penalties for the crime of being gay (though dropping its provision making homosexuality a death penalty offense in certain cases). American anti-gay activists mostly offered praise to the East African nation. At least one group thought that Uganda should have kept its death penalty plank.

Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin lawmaker who last month won his race for an open seat in the U.S. House, also attacked opponents of Uganda’s anti-gay law, warning that people like Sec. John Kerry will bring about God’s judgment on America for his criticisms of Uganda.

In this special edition of Paranoia-Rama, we look at five of the most incendiary and unhinged responses from our friends on the Radical Right to President Obama’s announcement that he would grant temporary deportation relief to some unauthorized immigrants and his speech last night laying out his plan.

As of today, there is only one person undergoing treatment for Ebola in the United States, and only two people have contracted the disease in the U.S., both of whom are healthcare workers who survived.

But the U.S.’s success in fighting the disease at home has not stopped Republican politicians and their allies in the conservative media from turning it into a political issue, warning of an impending massive Ebola outbreak in the U.S. and declaring that when that happens it will be all President Obama’s fault.

Here are five of the most common conspiracy theories that conservative commentators and their Republican allies are pushing about Ebola:

1. Obama Will Bring Ebola To The U.S. Through The Southern Border

Never mind the fact that the countries hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak are all in Africa. Or that there hasn’t been a single case of Ebola in Latin America, let alone among migrants crossing the southern border. Republican politicians aren’t going to waste a good opportunity to gin up vague, unfounded xenophobic fears by claiming that people infected with Ebola are about to cross the southern border. (That is, if they haven’t already!)

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., said in July that he had heard “reports” of undocumented immigrants infected with the Ebola virus coming into the U.S. through the southern border. When asked about these “reports” by journalists, Gingrey admitted that they did not actually exist. Indiana GOP Rep. Todd Rokita similarly warned that undocumented minors from Central America could represent a threat “from a public-health standpoint, with Ebola circulating and everything else.”

This month, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., warned conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck about the prospect of the Ebola virus jumping the southern border, and in another interview speculated that Obama’s policies may cause thousands of U.S. troops to contract Ebola.

Thom Tillis, the North Carolina House speaker challenging Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, said his plan to deal with Ebola is “to seal the border and secure it,” while Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican locked in a tight re-election race, cited Ebola as a major reason why “we have to secure the border and we cannot have amnesty.”

Mike Huckabee warned his Fox News audience that people with Ebola will begin to fly from West Africa to Mexico in order to sneak into the U.S.: “If someone with Ebola really wants to come to the U.S., just get to Mexico and walk right in."

Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who is now running for Senate in New Hampshire, said that America’s “porous” southern border will let people with Ebola just “walk across it.” He later claimed that “if Mitt [Romney] was the president right now,” then he could “guarantee you we would not be worrying about Ebola right now.”

2. Obama Will Bring Ebola To The U.S. In Order To Impose Martial Law

Naturally, the White House “orchestrated” the Ebola epidemic in West Africa to justify its Big Government agenda, according to several conservative commentators and at least one actual member of Congress.

Rep. Steve Stockman, Republican of Texas, said this month that Obama has laid the groundwork to use “emergency powers to take over control of the economy and everything” and speculated that the president might intentionally slow the government response to Ebola in order to create a crisis situation that he could then exploit:

Their terminology is there’s always a crisis which they want to use to their benefit, I would not be surprised that the reason that you see a lack of response is so that it becomes a real crisis and things can be used to correct the crisis, you know. It’s just bizarre there’s not enough action up front and I’m wondering if that’s — I’m not saying this — but I’m wondering if that’s intentional in order to create a greater crisis to use it as a blunt force to say, well in order to solve this crisis we’re going to have to take control of the economy and individuals and so forth. I don’t know. It’s just a strange non-response, a strange way of handling it and I think that if it does go forward and we do not control it, there may be an overreaction where the government starts taking away the rights of those that aren’t that necessarily involved or need that to happen. I hope that’s not that case but as you know this current government uses crisis to advance their philosophy and their agenda.

Laurie Roth, a conservative talk show host, predicted that Obama would “create a guise to declare martial law due to created outbreaks” and introduce a fake Ebola vaccine that would “act as a tracker.”

The conspiracy theorists of WorldNetDaily are sounding similar themes.

Erik Rush, a columnist for the conservative media outlet, wondered if Obama administration officials actually “want Ebola to spread in the United States,” creating a crisis “orchestrated by the White House in order to ultimately ‘legitimize’ a declaration of martial law in America.”

Mychal Massie also took to WorldNetDaily to suggest that Obama will manufacture an Ebola crisis in order to achieve his goal of cancelling the 2016 elections and staying in office indefinitely.

WorldNetDaily’s Morgan Brittany claimed that the government is showing “no urgency to stop the disease from entering the U.S.,” which she said betrays the administration’s intention to make use of its non-existent FEMA coffins, declare martial law and seize guns.

“Questions were then brought up about the stockpiling of ammunition and weapons by Homeland Security over the past couple of years and the $1 billion worth of disposable FEMA coffins supposedly stored in Georgia. Why was there preparation being made for FEMA camps to house people in isolation?” Brittany wondered. “My fear is that this has all been orchestrated from the very beginning. Who knows? Maybe the current administration needs this to happen so martial law can be declared, guns can be seized and the populace can be controlled. Once that happens … game over.”

3. Obama Will Bring Ebola Outbreak To The U.S. To Help His ‘African Brothers’

Conservatives frequently insist that none of their criticism of Obama has anything to do with race, and more than a handful have claimed that the president’s handling of the Ebola outbreak proves that he is the real racist.

Conservative columnist and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman cited Obama’s response to the Ebola outbreak as proof that he favors “his African brothers, putting the interests of fellow blacks, with whom he feels a kinship, ahead of others.”

“Obama has favored his African brothers over the rest of us by allowing them free entry into this country,” Klayman wrote in another column. “As a result, Ebola has now been introduced into the United States, may be on the verge of spreading rapidly, with the end result being potential massive death to our citizenry.”

“Regrettably our Muslim commander in chief has favored his own creed over the rest of us,” he added.

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly also claimed that Obama is “letting these diseased people into this country to infect our own people” in order to make the U.S. more like Africa.

“Obama doesn’t want America to believe that we’re exceptional,” she wrote. “He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too. That’s his attitude.”

Rush Limbaugh argued that “leftist” elected officials believe that Ebola “is ultimately traced back to us; because of our slavery, we kind of deserve a little bit of this.”

Not to be outdone, Laura Ingraham maintained that Obama’s “familial connection to Africa” and “core ties to the African continent” are shaping the president’s response to Ebola to the detriment to the U.S.

4. Obama Will Bring Ebola Outbreak To The U.S. Because He Hates America

Public health experts have consistently said that knee-jerk reactions like stopping travel from West Africa and quarantining healthcare workers will do nothing to lessen the Ebola risk in America (and may in fact make it worse), and that the best way for the United States to protect itself from the disease is to help fight it at its source in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

But we all know not to trust scientists!

Republican politicians and conservative commentators have expressed outrage that President Obama has put resources into fighting Ebola in West Africa and is ignoring their calls for counterproductive flight bans and quarantines. They remind us that the president is, after all, an anti-American radical so everything he does should be held in suspicion.

Fox News commentator Keith Ablow speculated this month that “the president may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations,” arguing that Obama wants Americans to experience an Ebola epidemic out of a sense of “fairness” since he thinks the American people have “been a scourge on the face of the Earth.”

“We don’t have a president who has the American people as his primary interest,” Ablow said. “We’re not even voting for somebody who likes us. This guy, who has names very similar to two of our archenemies, Osama, well, Obama. And Hussein. Hussein.”

The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer said recently that he was just asking the question whether Obama wants to “punish” America with Ebola: “It looks like he actually wants Ebola to come to the United States. Why would he want that? Well, remember President Obama thinks that this country is racist to its core, it’s been racist since the beginning, it’s an evil, colonial force that’s been the root of all kinds of evil all around the world, it needs to be punished, it needs to be brought down to size, it needs to be disciplined.”

Conservative talk show host Michael Savage suggested that Obama “wants to infect the nation with Ebola,” insisting that Obama’s handling of Ebola “rises to levels of treason, it actually exceeds any level of treason I’ve ever season.”

“Obama wants equality and he wants fairness and it’s only fair that America have a nice epidemic or two or three or four in order to really feel what it’s like to be in the Third World. You have to look at it from the point of view of a leftist,” he added.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, also posited that Obama and other Democratic officials say “don’t quarantine, let’s don’t close our borders” because they “feel like we want everyone to feel included” and “don’t want anybody to feel like they’re being left out.”

Glenn Beck speculated that Obama may be allowing the disease to take hold in conservative parts of the country, telling Fox News host Bill O’Reilly earlier this month that the president was ignoring the cases of two nurses who contracted Ebola in Dallas, perhaps because the city “doesn’t particularly care for the president.”

If this were happening in Washington, D.C., right now, do you think the President and his administration would be acting like this? Do you think the Congress would be acting like this? This is happening in Dallas, Texas, this is a top-ten city in the United States of America. Happens to be one that doesn’t particularly care for the president all that much and his policies, one that the president has not been too favorable on. We are already being squeezed on our southern border, now we’re being squeezed by Ebola. Is there an agenda here? Is that possibly the reason, because I can’t figure out any other reason.

5. Ebola Is God’s Judgment On America (Especially Obama)

Of course, several Religious Right figures are responding to the Ebola epidemic by suggesting that it is divine punishment on America.

The televangelist John Hagee said this month that Ebola is a sign of God’s disapproval of Obama’s foreign policy in the Mideast.

“Our president is dead-set on dividing Jerusalem. God is watching and he will bring America into judgment,” he said, and as a result “we are now experiencing the crisis of Ebola.”

Ron Baity, a North Carolina pastor who worked with the Family Research Council and other anti-gay groups to pass a marriage equality ban, blamed Ebola on the gay community.

“We are bringing the judgment of God on this nation,” Baity said. “As sure as Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, don’t be surprised at the plagues, don’t be surprised at the judgment of God. You think Ebola is bad now? Just wait.”

“Trunews” host Rick Wiles also linked Ebola to homosexuality, but had a slightly different view. As Wiles explained, “Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion.”

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

While he isn’t busy persecuting conservative activists, President Obama spends his time helping ISIS fighters avoid airstrikes…that he himself ordered. At least, that’s what we learned this week in the alternate reality of the far-right.

After switching his plea from not guilty to guilty for making illegal campaign donations, a felony, conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza was sentenced to eight months probation in a community confinement center along with psychological therapy. The sentencing prompted yet another media tour for D’Souza, who insisted that his prosecution for breaking the law — which he admitted to doing — amounts to political persecution.

D’Souza boasted in an interview with WorldNetDaily that the government was not “successful in shutting me up,” and the conservative activist told Glenn Beck that the prosecution came at the orders from the “petty” President Obama. Beck even said that D’Souza “is a political prisoner,” despite the fact that D’Souza was not sentenced to any prison time.

Roberts defended his remarks by explaining that Obama wants to turn the U.S. into “a European socialistic state,” adding: “You can’t tell me anything that he has not tried to nationalize.”

And if rhetoric like that doesn’t work, Roberts will shore up his standing with the Tea Party crowd with the help of his latest booster: Sarah Palin.

2. People Who Believe In Climate Change Are Just Like Hitler

Rush Limbaugh knows the real reason people believe that human activities are influencing climate change. No, not because there is a consensus among climate scientists on the matter, but as Limbaugh explains, “it’s all politics.”

“It is a politics that intentionally insults the intelligence of people and preys on the dumb and the stupid and the weak,” Limbaugh said while definitely not projecting. In order to find “meaning in their lives,” Limbaugh explained, people start thinking they have the power to “save the planet” and start to feel “their new life has meaning” and that “they can make a difference.”

And you know who else thought he could make a difference with his life? Hitler.

“Hitler made a difference,” he said. “Stop and think about that.”

1. Obama Is Shielding ISIS While Bombing Them

Conservatives are having a difficult time rationalizing the fact that President Obama has launched hundreds of airstrikes against ISIS and other extremist groups while at the same time insisting that he is a secret Muslim and terrorist sympathizer.

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

Are schools spending the money that they earn by giving out free condoms to finance lessons on “how to be homosexuals”? And will America survive long enough to find out?

5. The Gays Are Coming To Teach Your Children ‘How To Be Homosexuals’

On a conference call with members of his Conservative Republicans of Texas group last week, Fox News darling Steven Hotze shared his own take on the anti-gay myth that LGBT rights advocates want to legalize pedophilia and “recruit” children.

“There’s another key point of the homosexual agenda, and it’s overturning the laws prohibiting pedophilia,” Hotze asserted, bringing up of course the tiny group NAMBLA. “They want to break down the laws, they want to decriminalize sex between a man and a boy. If you can believe it, that’s how sick and deviant and perverted their minds are, it’s terrible.”

“They’ve got to do that, because they can’t reproduce, they’ve got to recruit,” he continued. “Why do you think they want to get in the Boy Scouts?”

Hotze also exposed the goal of the marriage equality movement: “If they allow same-sex marriage in Texas, folks, they’ll be passing out stuff to your children to teach them how to be homosexuals.”

4. Marriage Equality Will Bring About America’s Collapse

You might have thought Hotze’s predictions are terrifying, but he has nothing on James Dobson, who warned this week that marriage equality will cause “the entire superstructure of culture” in the United States to “ come crashing down.”

“That's happened in Rome, it happened in Greece, it's happened throughout history and I don't think that America can survive in the form we have known ... if we allow the family to disintegrate. And that is, in fact, what's happening,” he said.

3. Obama’s True Nature Revealed

Respected language analyst Rush Limbaugh knows why President Obama said in a speech last year that “I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options” to respond to a chemical weapons attack in Syria.

The words “my military,” Limbaugh said this week, reveal the president’s “messianic complex.”

“He thinks that the existence of the United States while he is president is nothing more than the story of Barack Obama.”

Limbaugh was echoing the attack of Charles Krauthammer, who picked up on the phrase to accuse Obama of being a Napoleonic “narcissist.”

The real question is whether Napolean-narcissist-messiah Obama’s military is ready to “laser or blitz” Mexico in a war over undocumented immigrants.

Republican House candidate Mark Walker of North Carolina floated the idea of a war against our southern neighbor at a Tea Party event in June.

"I will tell you if you have foreigners who are sneaking in with drug cartels to me that is a national threat," he said. "And if we got to go laser or blitz somebody with a couple of fighter jets for a little while to make our point, I don't have a problem with that either. So yeah, whatever we need to do."

1. The Free Condom Racket

Perhaps the coming U.S.-Mexico war can be financed by the profits that public schools are making off of providing free condoms.

Starnes’ theory : The school was afraid that the student’s promotion of abstinence would cut into the “condom profits” it was earning by making free condoms available to students.

“Here’s my take on it, I thought it was interesting, [the student’s mom] said what’s really interesting is that any child in that junior high school can go to the counselor’s office and ask for and receive free condoms and yet her daughter cannot wear her pro-abstinence t-shirt in the public school,” Starnes said. “Here’s what I think the issue is Tony Perkins, I believe that maybe they were concerned this pro-abstinence t-shirt might cut into this school’s condom profits.”

Bathhouse Barry referring to himself as the "Voice in the Wilderness, like John the Baptist for Jesus". This was in reference to his belief that he will introduce the mahdi to the world (possibly an alien as in transdimensional being) aka demon spirit. You can't make this stuff up. Obama is doing far too much blow and weed. Someone needs to curtail his meetings with Reggie Love.

“Folks, this, none of this, this is crazy, we’re feminizing this game and it’s a man’s game and if we keep feminizing this game we’re going to ruin it, if we keep chickifying this game, we’re going to ruin it,” Limbaugh said, lashing out at the “feminized,” “politically correct” men who apparently dominate the NFL and sports media.

Limbaugh also linked the scandal to the Democratic Party (who of course are the real sexists), suggesting that NFL players are probably Democrats who abuse their wives: “‘War on women,’ these guys beating up their wives, are they all Republicans or are they voting Democrat [sic] you think? Who is really conducting the war on women here? Who is actually doing it? Who has brought all this about? All this supposed abuse on women takes place in the NFL, who are these guys, think they’re voting Republican? I kind of doubt it. I did just ask that, are these guys who are engaging in domestic violence, which is a war on women, are they voting Republican or are they voting Democrat? I think the odds are they’re voting Democrat, aren’t they?”

At least, that’s the story according to Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver and his “Faith & Freedom” radio show co-host Matt Barber.

Staver, who once warned of “forced homosexuality” under Obama, said Christians have never faced such a horrible or more persecuted time in American history than they do under Obama’s presidency, and things have gotten so bad that the U.S. government is more punitive and cruel than Nazi Germany.

1. Dirty Democrats Helping ‘Uneducated’ People Vote

Unable to back up claims about the hazards of voter fraud with any actual proof, Republican officials now just seem to be giving away what their “election integrity” campaigns are all about.

Georgia state Sen. Frank Millar, for example, is upset that a government officials plan to open a polling location at a mall “dominated by African American shoppers” and “near several large African American mega churches,” and has pledged to stop the plan from going forward.

Millar explained that he isn’t upset that black people are voting, just that uneducated people (wink, wink) are voting: “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters. If you don't believe this is an efort [sic] to maximize Democratic votes pure and simple, then you are not a realist. This is a partisan stunt and I hope it can be stopped.”

Not to be outdone, Georgia’s top elections official, Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, expressed dismay that “the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there.” Kemp cited ACORN, a group which no longer exists, to substantiate his worries about voter fraud.

The right-wing media is so eager to find evidence that Central American child migrants are bringing diseases into the U.S. that they have now found an outbreak to blame on the kids. The only problem? There is absolutely no evidence of a connection.

WorldNetDaily breathlessly reports today on speculation by right-wing radio host Michael Savage that an increase in patients with a severe respiratory illness in two hospitals in Kansas City and Chicago is linked to Central American children:

On his show, Savage also excoriated the government agency, stating, “The CDC is claiming they don’t know why this rhinovirus is suddenly breaking out in your area. … Don’t you think it would be rational to say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s look at these clusters to see if these kids are in schools where Obama dumped illegal aliens? You know that the government will not release the schools or the districts when they move these kids from Guatemala into this country? They won’t even disclose where they are?”

Limbaugh asked, “Are the two stories related or are they not? Does this sweeping, mysterious virus that’s multiplying across the Midwest, does it have anything to do with it or not? We don’t know. That’s the answer. We just don’t know. But some people think there may be some kind of a connection.”

WND even provided this helpful map, which when you look at it doesn’t actually appear to show any pattern at all:

And, when you get further into WND’s story, you learn that the actual experts they contacted were quick to dismiss the idea of a connection between child migrants and the disease. A CDC spokesman told WND that there was “no connection”:

Benjamin N. Haynes, CDC senior spokesman for the infectious disease team, told WND there’s “no connection” between the virus outbreak and the Obama administration’s relocation of illegal aliens across America who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border.

And a spokesman for one of the hospitals said that the cases they were dealing with came from their “usual demographic”:

A spokesman for the University of Chicago Medical Center told WND, “At the University of Chicago Medicine, these cases we have seen have been typical of our usual demographic, from all walks of life.”

For right-wing advocates, big conservative wins in the Supreme Court’s recently completed term have only confirmed the importance of electing a president in 2016 who will give them more justices in the mold of Samuel Alito and John Roberts. The Roberts and Alito nominations, and the conservative majority created by their confirmations, represent the triumph of a decades-long push by right-wing funders, big business, conservative political strategists, and legal groups to take ideological dominion of all levels of the federal judiciary.

Right-wing groups have long made attacks on the federal judiciary a staple of their rhetoric. Many claim America’s decline began with Supreme Court rulings against required prayer and Bible readings in public schools in the 1960s. Roe v. Wade, and more recently, judicial rulings in favor of marriage equality, have been characterized as “judicial tyranny” and “judicial activism.” Of course right-wing legal groups have been pushing hard for their own form of judicial activism, and have pushed Republican presidents to nominate judges they can count on.

Conservatives like Cruz never stopped denouncing liberals for their efforts to use the courts to promote their ideological agenda, even as they began to do much the same thing themselves. The heart of Cruz’s legal career was a sustained and often successful undertaking to use the courts for conservative ends, like promoting the death penalty, lowering the barriers between church and state, and undermining international institutions and agreements.

Right-wing activists are proud of what they have accomplished, as Richard Land, long-time leader of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told National Journal’s Tiffany Stanley. As Brian Tashman reports in RWW, Land “waxed nostalgic for the days when President Bush was in office…and especially for Bush’s commitment to nominating ultra-conservative federal judges.”

“Alito and Roberts are the gifts that keep on giving, and we would have gotten neither one of those without our involvement,” Land said, predicting that Roe v. Wade will soon be “thrown onto the ash heap of history.”

…The Supreme Court’s ruling this year in the Hobby Lobby case shows the Religious Right’s strong focus on the judiciary is paying off. And Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told Stanley that conservatives will continue to use the courts as part of their strategy to keep “the barbarians at bay.”

But in spite of their wins, and their success in creating the most pro-corporate Court since the New Deal, right-wing activists are nervous that some of their big wins, like Hobby Lobby and Citizens United, were 5-4 decisions. They want to pad their majority and continue their march to remake America via the courts.

The Senate

Since federal judges have to be confirmed by the Senate, right-wing groups are also using the Supreme Court in 2014 Senate campaigns. An anti-choice PAC, Women Speak Out, followed the Hobby Lobby ruling almost immediately with attacks on Mark Pryor and other Democrats for not having supported the confirmation of Samuel Alito.

On the day of the Court’s decisions in Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, a Republican, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat, tweeted “Today’s SCOTUS rulings were a win for our 1st Amendment freedoms, a loss for Hagan, Obama, & DC bureaucrats.”

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who represents right-wing groups, told the Washington Post, “These Supreme Court decisions, it’s a reminder to people on our side of the aisle of the importance of the court, and then the importance of recapturing the Senate.”

Religious Liberty ‘Hanging by a Thread’

Right-wing pundits and organizations are already ramping up their rhetoric on judges as a 2016 presidential campaign issue, with many touting the 5-4 decision in Hobby Lobby as evidence that religious liberty is “hanging by a thread.”

Can I tell you the truth about the Hobby Lobby ruling? We're in such dangerous territory in terms of losing our freedom that we cheer when five out of nine people uphold the Constitution. We're not advancing anything, folks. We are barely hanging on here. … And here comes Hillary Clinton thinking this decision is a step toward the kind of anti-women policy seen in extremist undemocratic nations is outrageous.

The woman is either a blithering idiot or a total in-the-tank statist, maybe a combination of the two. But this is not a step toward anything. This is a temporary halt in the onslaught toward totalitarianism.

We're just barely hanging on. We cheer! We conservatives stand up and cheer when we manage to get five people to see it the right way. "Oh, my God! Oh, Lord! Thank you so much, Lord. You saved another day." Five people out of nine, five said the Constitution means what it says. The troubling thing to me is the four people that didn't! Liberty and freedom are hanging by a thread here!

“OK, We won. But the Hobby Lobby vote should have been 9-0. Wake up, America. Your liberty is on the line!”

It is simply outrageous that four Supreme Court Justices, and many Americans, cannot see the clear and offensive proposition of the Government in this regard…..We won today, but barely. It should have been 9–0. Wake up, America; your religious and other liberties are hanging by the thread of one vote.

“While we celebrate this victory, the fact remains that four justices on the Supreme Court, including the two appointed by Obama, evidently share his narrow view of America's first freedom and were willing to trample the religious liberty of millions of Americans in order to advance their radical pro-abortion agenda.

This narrow decision, with four liberal justices eager to go the wrong way, is a stark reminder to every man and woman of faith that their religious liberty is hanging by a thread.

The Court as Right-Wing Campaign Issue for 2016

Right-wing pundits and presidential candidates frequently use the federal judiciary as an issue to excite base voters. Back in 2012, one of the most effective things Mitt Romney did to shore up his weak support among conservative activists was to name a judicial advisory team headed by Robert Bork. That year, Terence Jeffrey, who worked on Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaigns and has written for right-wing publications, wrote:

Three of the nine justices on a U.S. Supreme Court that has decided many significant issues by 5-4 votes over the past decade will turn 80 years of age before the 2016 presidential election.

The three justices are Antonin Scalia, an anchor of the court’s conservative wing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an anchor of the court’s liberal wing, and Anthony Kennedy, who is often the decisive swing vote in 5-4 opinions….

Bobby Jindal is among the crop of potential 2016 presidential candidates who is making an issue of the courts. In an interview with a conservative Christian blogger during last month’s Iowa state Republican convention, Jindal suggested if Republicans take control of the Senate this year they would block additional nominees. Asked about federal judges overturning state marriage bans for same-sex couples, Jindal said, ““This shows you the importance of the November elections. We don’t need this President putting more liberal judges on the bench.”

It is important, whether you are a lawyer or not, to understand what it means for the courts to actually apply the Constitution as opposed for them just to create new laws or to read things and just decide they are going to contradict what the other two branches of government did. We’ve gotten away from these three separate but equal branches of government and instead we’ve got these activist judges who are overreaching. We have to recognize the problem for what it is,” Jindal added.

He emphasized the importance of elections and their impact on judicial confirmations because sometimes Constitutional amendments will correct the problem, and other times federal judges will just overrule them.

Mike Huckabee has seemingly made attacks on the judiciary a centerpiece of his campaign. In May, he called for the impeachment of an Arkansas judge who ruled in favor of marriage equality. Last year, urging Senate Republicans to block an Obama appeals court nominee, he said, “Judges can linger on for decades after a President leaves office, and a bad one can wreak havoc that echoes down the ages.”

Meanwhile, presidential contender Rick Santorum and the right-wing Judicial Crisis Network are attacking Chris Christie for not sufficiently making right-wing ideology a litmus test for his state judicial appointments. Santorum told Yahoo News earlier this month, “To see a record as abysmal as Gov. Christie’s record in the state of New Jersey, I guarantee you that will be a red flag for most voters in the state of Iowa, but also most voters in the Republican primary.” (Earlier this month, while in Iowa campaigning for Gov. Terry Branstad, Christie said he supports the Court’s Hobby Lobby decision; he had initially declined to say whether he supported the decision.)

The Judicial Crisis Network has also slammed Christie, saying his failure to “deliver on judicial activism” may have doomed his 2016 presidential hopes. It has created an entire website devoted to trashing Christie’s judicial record to conservative voters: www.christiebadonjudges.com. In June, Fox News ran an op ed by JCN’s Carrie Severino using Christie’s alleged failure to appoint right-wing ideologues to the state supreme court as a way to discredit him with conservative activists.

Christie didn’t deliver on judicial activism. Has he doomed his 2016 bid?

If a candidate’s tenure as governor is his road-test for the presidency, Governor Chris Christie just flunked.

As a candidate for governor, Christie talked the talk on judges, vowing to "remake" the New Jersey Supreme Court and to transform the most activist court in the nation into one that operates under the rule of law.

Despite having the opportunity to appoint four of seven justices on the court since taking office, Christie has repeatedly nominated individuals with no discernible judicial philosophy….

And while elected representatives must stand for re-election every few years, federal judges sit for life.

Today’s nominee could still be playing the same tricks in 2050 or beyond. That is why the issue of judges matters so much during presidential primaries and caucuses….

Right-wing advocates have been talking for a while about how important it is to their judicial plans not just to elect a Republican, but to elect a Republican committed to making the kind of Supreme Court nominations they want. In February, right-wing activist Mychal Massie complained that many justices nominated by Republican presidents over the past few decades did not turn out to be ideological warriors (though that is hardly the case with more recent nominees).

But forward-thinking conservatives are keenly aware that we must be concerned about the future as well, and not just because of Obama. Based on age alone, one of the primary areas of concern is that the person elected president in 2016 will potentially have at least four Supreme Court Justices to replace. Two of the potential four are liberals, so a Democrat president would simply be replacing liberals with liberals, ergo, it would be a wash. But of the other two the one is a solid Constructionist, and the other is a swing vote who has, in recent years, ruled based on Constructionism enough times that we should be concerned if a Democrat president replaces him….

As you can see, the potential for the political complexion of the High Court to be changed for decades to come should be of critical concern if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016. But, it is myopic betise on an epic level to even for an instant believe we need not be concerned if a Republican wins. Especially if it is an establishment Republican….

With Karl Rove and Reince Priebus pulling the strings of the GOP and RNC, the Republican Party resembles a RINO theme park more than it does the Party true conservatives have supported.

With them controlling things from behind the curtain it is not just critical that the next president be “conservative” but he/she must be a legitimate conservative whose conservative bonafides are unimpeachable. It does conservatism no good to elect a Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Jeb Bush type. The 2016 election will place in office a person with the potential to change the face of SCOTUS for many decades to come. And as John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, et al. have showed us — it’s not just Democrats who are betraying us.

Religious Right leaders will certainly be keeping the issue of judicial nominations at the forefront of the 2016 campaigns. This week, George O. Wood, who heads the Assemblies of God denomination, wrote:

Moreover, we should encourage voting because elections have consequences. One of those consequences is that the president nominates judges who serve on district and appellate courts and on the Supreme Court. The U.S. Senate must then approve those nominees. It is a sad fact that no evangelical sits on the Supreme Court—even though evangelicals constitute a very large faith community in America. I suspect that at present no evangelicals could even be nominated or confirmed to a federal bench because they hold views that are pro-life and pro-traditional marriage. People in our Fellowship need to remember that when they cast a ballot, they effectively decide who will sit as a federal judge. Indirectly, they are casting a vote for or against a robust understanding of the free exercise of religion.

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

As the Radical Right continues its never-ending quest to stoop to new lows, this week conservative activists and Republican politicians claimed that progressives are sanctioning rape, planning to scrap the First Amendment and causing mass shootings by supporting marriage equality.

Cruz’s audience gasped in surprise at this bombshell announcement. It seems they hadn’t heard of this diabolical plan before – perhaps because it doesn’t exist.

It turns out that Cruz was referring to a proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United and related decisions such as this year’s McCutcheon ruling. The amendment seeks to restore to Congress and state legislatures the authority to reduce the role of unchecked and often undisclosed campaign donations from corporations and wealthy individuals.

But Cruz blatantly misrepresented these efforts to claim that Senate leaders are “repealing the First Amendment” because they want to quash the church and “don’t like it when the citizenry in their community has the temerity to criticize what they’ve done.”

4) Immigration Reform All About Hating America

Rush Limbaugh has a new theory that he hopes will incite conservative opposition to immigration reform: Democrats support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants because they hate America, hope to demonize the country and “undermine, sabotage if you will, elements of this nation’s founding.”

3. Liberals Want To Rape Your Kids

“Dr. Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt has a history of sending out insanelyanti-LGBTscreeds to members of his Religious Right group, Pray In Jesus Name, and this week no was no different.

Klingenschmitt, a Republican candidate for the Colorado House, warned members that liberals want to “rape” children by defending the rights of LGBT students: “‘Transgenders’ want your children. Liberals demand public access to rape your girls, at least visually in public bathrooms, or to expose themselves to your girls at school, without parental consent or protection of any kind.”

As always, conservatives pushed false claims about purported negative effects of nondiscrimination laws on religious freedom, with Jonathan Saenz of Texas Values warning that “these laws will be used as a weapon to actually run over people’s religious liberty rights” and Mike Huckabee suggesting that “this ordinance will take away your rights to live what you believe.”

1.Isla Vista Shooting: Blame Gay Marriage

It was only a matter of time until right-wing pundits blamed women’s rights advocates for the Isla Vista shooting spree by Elliot Rodger, who said he was driven by his hatred of women.

Media Matters points out that Fox News contributor Erick Erickson connected Rodger’s actions to the purported “war on masculinity” and gender equality, while another network commentator accused women tweeting under the #YesAllWomen hashtag of “man-hating.”

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

After turning the children of America gay, it turns out that Disney’shit film Frozen is also tricking kids into embracing witchcraft. Of course, that is just one of several anti-gay conspiracy theories we uncovered this week.

“The whole New World Order system is a Marxist system, and there are different components of it, but the fact is that the homosexuals are the foot soldiers, they’re the main foot soldiers of this agenda,” he said.

4. Muslim-Americans Putting Republicans In ‘The Back Of The Bus’

GOP politician Lou Ann Zelenick has dedicated her career to opposing the right of Muslim residents of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to build a mosque in their town. After losing that battle, now anti-Muslim activists have moved on to fighting the planned construction of a cemetery next to the mosque.

At a recent court hearing addressing the legal challenge against the cemetery, Zelenick and her supporters snapped at a Muslim student journalist and a reporter for the local NBC affiliate.

After arguing that the Disney film Frozen is turning children gay, pastor and radio host Kevin Swanson is now worried that Frozen is luring kids into witchcraft. While speaking with his co-host Steve Vaughn, who alleged that Frozen undermines faith in God, Swanson said that Frozen and other “magical tales turn out to be a means by which children are led into witchcraft.”

2. Arrests Of Democrats Are Part Of A Democratic Conspiracy

Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to claim that the arrests of three Democratic politicians on corruption charges are part of a Democratic conspiracy. Yesterday, Limbaugh said that FBI investigations into the elected officials are part of a Democratic plot to purge the party of “bad apples” before the midterm election in November: “It is entirely possible that what is going on here is that the head honchos of the Democrat party [sic] are basically behind an effort to take out all of their bad apples before the election, make them old news by the time the election comes around. The timing here is obviously curious and it really is hard to believe the FBI would be working against the wishes of the regime. Isn’t it?”

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

The tired old arguments about gay recruitment seem to never die… but maybe our new Illuminati overlords will save folks like Rush Limbaugh from the gay menace.

5. Marriage Equality Makes Kids Gay

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council debated a caller on his radio show, Washington Watch, about why the FRC uses the phrase “natural marriage” since the definition of marriage has fluctuated over history and throughout different cultures.

Ultimately, Perkins tried to make the argument that marriage equality for same-sex couples will ultimately turn kids gay and make children obsessed with sex. The FRC head even worried that students will stop learning about science and reading comprehension as schools morph into sexual instruction laboratories.

Recent sponsor emails have purported to expose the “the 7 Deadly Drugs the U.S. Government can’t wait for you to swallow,” the missing gold in Fort Knox, a secret cancer cure hidden by the government and President Obama’s “secret mistress.”

One email, Media Matters points out, claims that the “Illuminati was behind every consequential wealth event of the past year,” warning that the group has “a deathgrip [sic] on America.” “Once on the brink of extinction, the secret society has powerfully re-emerged in the United States. In fact, it now wields more power than ever.”

According to Klingenschmitt, Disney’s attempt “to push a gay agenda upon your family” is the result of the “influence of demonic spirits who want to recruit your children into sin.”

2. Rush Limbaugh Fears Gay ‘Assault’ On Straight People

Right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh fears that “we’re fast approaching a world where it ain’t cool to be straight,” a revelation he made in response to defensive-end Michael Sam’s decision to come out of the closet.

The thrice-divorced talk show host was upset about Sam’s announcement, fearing that it will lead to a new gay tyranny where the heterosexual majority is “under assault by the 2-5 percent that are homosexual.”

1. Obama Turning America Into Nazi Germany

Right-wing darling Ben Carson is afraid that today’s “secular progressive movement” is doing “what Hitler was doing.” He even envies Vladimir Putin’s Russia for “gaining prestige and influence throughout the world” by “warming to religion,” unlike the “godless” United States.

Carson said that as a result of the work of the “extremely intolerant” left, Americans now “live in a Gestapo age.”

The backlash to the announcement by University of Missouri defensive end and likely NFL draft pick Michael Sam that he is gay is troubling the usual suspects. Anti-gay author Michael Brown is out with a column criticizing Sam’s “selfish act” and suggesting that he should’ve stayed in the closet.

According to Brown, Sam’s “hormones might be raging for men the way the other players’ hormones rage for women,” which will make “the ‘bromance’ type of close relationships that many players enjoy” impossible since they won’t be “as physical and free with a homosexual teammate.”

But once they have made their announcement, how can everyone be expected to feel completely comfortable? And with the “bromance” type of close relationships that many players enjoy, would they be as physical and free with a homosexual teammate?

And since NFL players are hardly known for their sexual purity—with many notable exceptions—is it homophobic to think that Sam’s hormones might be raging for men the way the other players’ hormones rage for women?

…

Looked at from another angle, it was more of a selfish act, and not only in the sense that Sam is suddenly a national celebrity. (As of Feb. 10, a Google search for his name yielded more than 3 million hits. Just one week ago, his numbers would have been a fraction of this.) What I mean is that professional football is all about the team, and the focus must be on making a joint sacrifice in order to win rather than drawing attention to oneself.

…

Why can’t he just play the game, keep his private life private (as many public figures do), and when his career is over, if he wants to tell the whole world he’s gay, he can do so then?

Right on cue, Rush Limbaugh declared that Sam’s announcement is proof that heterosexuals are “under assault,” a claim he made during a rant against the gay “political agenda” that couples as a great example of heterosexual privilege.

The Media Research Center is upset that major broadcast networks “celebrated the announcement” and chided sports commentators for their alleged mistreatment of Tim Tebow in an article that seems to imply that Tebow is the first and only evangelical Christian ever to play for the NFL.

ESPN on Monday was a long parade of congratulatory guests, like columnist Kay Fagan, who used words like “authenticity” and “inclusion.” Fagan ended a rapturous column by saying of Sam, “His truth is now.” (Does homosexuality come with a separate truth? Or do you pay extra, like undercarriage coating?)

Ok, lets simmer down and wait for the backlash. It’ll come. It has to when personal life and philosophy and social issues intersect with the NFL. Here it comes … Er, no? But when Tim Tebow entered the draft he encountered a rain of hate from people worried for the sport, people who resented having to hear about the personal beliefs of “Saint Timmy,” as CBS’s Pete Prisco called him in April, 2010.

Pastor Ron Cantor took to Charisma to warn that Sam’s presence in the locker room “is going to make for an uncomfortable situation.”

Cantor asserts that the truly courageous people are those who are worried about having a gay teammate: “How ironic—in the past it was the homosexual who was afraid to come out. Now it’ll be the guy who doesn’t want to take a shower next to the homosexual who will be shunned and shamed—and he will be told to keep his mouth shut.”

Let me just be honest. If I had a job whereby I had to undress and shower several times a week with a roomful of very fit, attractive females—well, let’s just say I would struggle. And that clearly is the concern of heterosexual football players. It is a legitimate issue. I am not an expert, but if someone says to me that they are attracted to men and then are going to see them undressed on an almost daily basis, it is going to make for an uncomfortable situation. Right?

But don’t say it out loud—not unless you are willing to be skewered by the media elites. Oh, wait, too late. Jonathan Vilma of the New Orleans Saints already stated the obvious.

“I think that he would not be accepted as much as we think he would be accepted," Vilma said. "I don’t want people to just naturally assume, like, ‘Oh, we’re all homophobic.’ That’s really not the case. Imagine if he’s the guy next to me and, you know, I get dressed, [bare], taking a shower, the whole nine, and it just so happens he looks at me. How am I supposed to respond?”

Vilma made those completely honest and valid comments a few days ago—before Sam came out. For sure, he will be vilified and called immature. But come on, let’s be honest: No one expects adult men and women to take mass showers together on the job—for the obvious reasons. But Vilma is juvenile and uneducated for not wanting to shower next to an openly gay man?

I wonder if more NFL players will have the courage to speak up. How ironic—in the past it was the homosexual who was afraid to come out. Now it’ll be the guy who doesn’t want to take a shower next to the homosexual who will be shunned and shamed—and he will be told to keep his mouth shut.

Anti-gay commentators were none too pleased with last night’s performance of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love” at the Grammy Awards, which included a ceremony where thirty-four couples — including same-sex couples — were married. Unsurprisingly, many claimed that the show was evil and mean to anti-gay activists.

Here are five of the angriest anti-gay reactions to last night’s show:

5. Grammys MakeMe Want To Vomit, SendUs To Hell

Conservative commentator Erik Rush admitted he didn’t actually watch the Grammy Awards last night, but still observed that the “Same Love” performance “makes you want to vomit.”

Rush said the performance was led by “a disgusting pack of subverts” who want America “shepherded down the path to Hell.”

4. Boycott GrammySponsors

Serial hoaxer/right-wing activist Jim Garrow insisted the people involved with the Grammys must repent for turning the event into “an excuse for some to dress up and celebrate their own perversity.”

Garrow also called on his Facebook followers to boycott companies that sponsored the Grammy’s, but didn’t name names: “Pick your sponsor and boycott them. It is the only language that they understand and will bow to. Profit.”

3. Grammys Are ‘Sick’

Fox News pundit Todd Starnes lashed out at the “sick” Grammy Awards on Twitter, accusing the event of “mocking marriage” and “cramming a social agenda down our throats.” “This was not about marriage,” he wrote. “This was about bashing god and the church.”

A very-non-self-aware Starnes said he found the performance “bigoted,” of course.

2. Rush Limbaugh Sad

Rush Limbaugh insists that no one watches the “horrible” and “despicable” Grammy Awards anyway…but he is still really, really upset about it: “Nobody watches, but because they have not strayed from the liberal path, they are still loved and adored and praised.”

1. Gays Run The World

Texas-based radio host Lynn Woolley reacted to the awards show in a post titled Gay Agenda takes over Grammys, writing that the “celebration of perversity” proves that “homosexuals have taken over the country.” Woolley added that he thinks being gay is just a fad: “I’ll bet it fades out with time as more and more men realize that women are pretty dang special.”

I don’t know these people, but — Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love” gay anthem became the theme song for 33 newlyweds with Queen Latifah officiating the marriages. As the network, CBS was complicit in this celebration of perversity. WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHERE THIS COUNTY GOES FROM HERE? Homosexuals have taken over the country and I’m just curious to see what they do next. I guess they want a gay president. Maybe a gay Pope. (!)

I dunno. I didn’t see the gay stuff, but I got bored quickly by the crap that now passes as music and I decided to pop in a disk and watch an episode of THE MENTALIST. I love The Mentalist as it is all about logic. The Grammy Awards were all about perversion. So what can we do?

I suppose that a few years from now, same sex “marriage” will be as common as divorce is now. I’ll bet it fades out with time as more and more men realize that women are pretty dang special. I guess we’ll see. I wonder what Patrick Jane would say?

Rush Limbaugh Posts Archive

Conservative pundits are downright furious about the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to preserve net neutrality, ensuring that internet service providers treat all data equally. But their anger seems driven more by reflexive hostility to any proposal that President Obama supports rather than an understanding of the principle behind net neutrality. MORE >

A group of GOP politicians, including two likely presidential candidates, have decided to appear in a documentary with anti-gay radicals accusing the equality movement of trying to ban religion. Such politicians already kowtow to extreme voices like Rush Limbaugh and the anti-government ideologues at Fox News, so it makes sense that they are now joining together to make absurd claims about the supposed dangers of gay rights in America. MORE >

Breitbart News is rallying the troops to support the Tea Party effort to oust John Boehner.
Rush Limbaugh insists “my audience is tired of me being called a racist.”
Fox News hosts tell ladies the secrets about how to keep their men happy.
Jeb Bush is not happy with marriage equality coming to Florida.
Meanwhile, Ave Maria, Tom Monaghan’s Catholic city in Florida, continues its mission to flout the First Amendment.
MORE >

Supporters of marriage equality made tremendous progress this year in striking down discriminatory bans on same-sex marriages while, on the local level, more municipalities have enacted legal protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Radical Right, however, sees these changes as a reason to find new strategies to fight what it believes is a tyrannical government bent on persecuting conservatives and inviting divine punishment. Facing losses in court and at the ballot box, many conservatives hope that their brand of anti-gay politics may find more success... MORE >

In this special edition of Paranoia-Rama, we look at five of the most incendiary and unhinged responses from our friends on the Radical Right to President Obama’s announcement that he would grant temporary deportation relief to some unauthorized immigrants and his speech last night laying out his plan. MORE >

As of today, there is only one person undergoing treatment for Ebola in the United States, and only two people have contracted the disease in the U.S., both of whom are healthcare workers who survived.
But the U.S.’s success in fighting the disease at home has not stopped Republican politicians and their allies in the conservative media from turning it into a political issue, warning of an impending massive Ebola outbreak in the U.S. and declaring that when that happens it will be all President Obama’s fault.
Here are five of the most common conspiracy theories that conservative... MORE >

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
While he isn’t busy persecuting conservative activists, President Obama spends his time helping ISIS fighters avoid airstrikes…that he himself ordered. At least, that’s what we learned this week in the alternate reality of the far-right.
5. Stop Persecuting Tony Perkins, Says Tony Perkins
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has made it quite clear that he believes anti-gay activists like himself will soon be forced into the “boxcars”... MORE >

By Brian Tashman and Miranda Blue
RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.
Are schools spending the money that they earn by giving out free condoms to finance lessons on “how to be homosexuals”? And will America survive long enough to find out?
5. The Gays Are Coming To Teach Your Children ‘How To Be Homosexuals’
On a conference call with members of his Conservative Republicans of Texas group last week, Fox News darling Steven Hotze shared his own take on the anti-gay myth that LGBT rights... MORE >